


in my heart burns a smoldering fire, smoldering fire

by notdarthvader



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 22:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13200267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notdarthvader/pseuds/notdarthvader
Summary: There’s something to be said about the old gods and the quiet places in between.In that space, between one breath and the next, as the waves break across rocky shores. Where the wind husks against the tall grass beneath clouded grey skies.There is a power in those spaces. The air sparks, crackles under the weight of it as the sea sings a promise that only few care to listen for.





	in my heart burns a smoldering fire, smoldering fire

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing in here is ship. Just bros being bros.

He comes back to the quiet cliffside of Norway often.

He can see the shape of his father in the roll of the clouds, hear his whisper in the crash of the waves.

Beneath his skin, lightning crackles.

* * *

 

There is a peace there, he thinks, eventually.

A distance, from the loud bustle of Midgard, and all its mortals. From the chaos that seems to lurk in his wake, the silent promise of destruction and devastation that springs up from his footprints.

Where they were once gods, they are now living new lives among the mortals of this earth.

The soil beneath his fingers is dry, loose to touch, but packed in. The spindly roots of the grass stubbornly cling to the earth, and the earth to it.

 _How fitting_ , he thinks.

He stands, dust falling from his fingers as he rises, and he runs his hand up the back of his head. His hair grows longer by the day, but it still prickles against his palm.

He closes his eyes, and breathes in the salt of the sea.

* * *

 

His brother follows him, once or twice, on the lonely journey through winding roads and quiet cliffside pathways.

 _I can’t believe you actually like it out here,_ he says, the corner of his lips curling in mockery. _Knowing you, I’d expect you to be living in Vegas._

_Why’s that, because I’m enticing and charming and known for my way with people?_

_No, because you’re a futile venture who takes and takes from the people around him, and gives very little in return. Also, no one wants to talk about you outside of engaging with you._

He throws a rock at his brother for that one, watching with a melancholy twist to his lips as the rock passes right through his arm. _Of course, I could say the same about you_ , he says then.

Loki’s smile is a bit more sardonic at that, and more than a little relenting. _I suppose so,_ he says. And then, even quieter. _We are brothers, after all._

 _If only you were actually saying these things_ , he says back, and then says nothing as the illusion of his brother fades away.

* * *

 

The last Valkyrie comes with him once as well.

She snaps the cap off a bottle of beer, and then off a second.

He takes it, and for several moments they drink in silence.

“This was the last place I saw him,” he says after hours, days have passed.

Under the grey skies, perhaps time does not exist at all.

She does not ask him to clarify, but instead takes another sip of her beer.

Instead, she says “I think about her every day.” They watch the waves crash against the horizon. She stands close to his shoulder, close enough he can feel the heat of her shoulder, the tremor that shakes her arm as she shoves her hand in her pocket, the other holding the neck of her beer bottle.

“I think,” she says, after another day, year, _lifetime_ has passed. “I think what if- what if I had moved to save her first-“

“But you didn’t,” he cuts in. “And she saved you. Because, you were worth it.”

“I know that,” she snaps back. Then, quieter. “I know that. But it’s just, sometimes,”

He waits.

She says nothing more.

“Sometimes I wonder. If I hadn’t messed with Midgard, if I hadn’t played at hero for as long as I did. If I had only gone back to Asgard, and straightened out my brother, found my father, I wonder if-“ He looks at the horizon and tries to drink from his beer.

It’s empty.

She glances at him, at her empty bottle, then pulls another pair of bottles from her backpack and cracks them open.

They drink.

* * *

 

 _You are not the god of hammers,_ the echo of his father’s voice tells him. _What were you the god of, again,_ his sister’s voice sneers at him.

In his nightmares, she takes his other eye, and he wakes to the dark of his room at night, shaking and shaking and shaking. When he finally throws the light switch on, he tells himself again and again and again that the shaking in his fingers is only relief.

It’s only relief.

* * *

 

Beneath his skin, lightning trembles.

* * *

 

He walks through crowded streets, head held low, his shoulders slumped forward, and no one recognizes him.

A woman stumbles into him on the subway, apologizes profusely, and averts her eyes as she backs away.

A man bumps into his shoulder and shoots him a glare as he rushes on, talking animatedly into his cellphone.

At night, the glow of the city lights choke out the light of the stars.

* * *

 

Still, there is quiet on the cliffs of Norway.

* * *

 

The call of the birds always feels muted, hushed. Distant.

Distant from the problems of the earth and from its people.

The Avengers, after finally remembering him, have called on him for aid every so often, and he lends it as willingly as he can. After all, this earth is as much his home now as it is theirs. Relearning the ancient tech is trying and exhausting, but they are nothing if not a durable people.

They have survived many things before, and he has no doubts they will survive a great many things to come.

But still.

He looks at the birds, flying free on their wings, and misses the wind in his hair.

* * *

 

_What were you the god of, again?_

On this earth, the people have all but buried their gods. Or twisted, perverted and distorted their gods.

On this earth, gods are not flesh, but a whispered promise.

He does not know what that promise is of. He does not think he cares to. Perhaps in this, ignorance is bliss.

After all, all he can really promise the people who follow him is that there will be destruction in his wake.

* * *

 

“You died,” he tells his brother, the second time that Loki tries to follow him to the cliffs.

“I didn’t take to it,” his brother says back. “It’s really not my color. It’s not yours, either. You are rather tough to kill.”

“You would know,” he says, and it comes out sharper than he means it to.

Today, however, this doesn’t seem to bother his brother. “Yes,” Loki agrees at last. “Yes, I suppose I would, wouldn’t I.”

He picks up a rock, and tosses it at his brother. He can’t quite keep his eyebrows from raising in surprise when it bounces off his brother’s forehead.

“Ouch,” Loki says a few moments later, an afterthought.

“You’re here, then.”

“You know, it is actually me some of the time.”

“Is it, though?”

Loki looks away, and he counts that as a victory.

“Why do you spend so much of your time here, anyways? And don’t say it’s because of father-“

“-It’s not that-“

“-because I know it’s not. You stand out here for days, stare at the sky, and do nothing. You’re boring, really.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while.

Overhead, the grey clouds swirl; beneath, the waves crash in a persistent siren song.

“Have you ever thought about diving in?” he asks, instead of an answer.

“I can tell you honestly, the thought has never crossed my mind, and it never will.”

“And why’s that?”

“Well,” Loki huffs, “first of all, this suit cost me a fortune, second, unlike some of us, I actually have a brain in my skull.”

Thor looks at the grey of the horizon, a hushed blur where the sea sinks into the sky. “Asgard is a people,” he says at last, after they have been quiet for hours. “And that people is here. But here, in this earth, with their politics, their red tape. It feels like a cage to me. Here,” he trails off and huffs out a laugh. “Here I am jealous of the birds.”

When he turns to glance at his brother, Loki is gone.

Overhead, the storm clouds rumble.

* * *

_What were you the god of, again?_

Sometimes, he can feel the whisper of the old stories in his skin when he stands, his toes so close to the edge of the cliffs.

The ocean rumbles beneath him, as the storm sings through the air around him, soaking through his clothes, plastering his hair to his face, to his cheeks.

It grows ever longer, hanging in an awkward mop around his face, but now it sticks to his skin, curling in the rain just as it once did.

Thunder crashes, and the lightning beneath his skin sings, dancing through his fingers, lighting off his arms in flickers as his feet sink into the mud, and the lightning arcs through the sky.

Beautiful. Wild.

Free.

He closes his eyes, and breathes in the petrichor.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from trøllabundin by Eivør Pálsdóttir  
> Heres the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPkhIP91wLc


End file.
